For years the use of floral and craft foam cones have been standard for holding artificial flowers in memorial vases. One example of floral and craft foam used in memorial vases is polystyrene foam. Regularly, the floral and craft markets polystyrene foam use white or green foams. The floral and craft foams come in many sizes, shapes, and price ranges and have a variety of uses. In most cases the placement of artificial flowers in memorial vases, floral and craft polystyrene foam is performed using cone sizes of 4″×2½″, 6″×3″, and 9″×4″. Foamed polymeric materials, such as polystyrene foam marketed under the trademark STYROFOAM®, is commonly used to secure the flowers and is the most widely used floral and craft foam on the market. For the purposes of this disclosure, the use of specific types of polystyrene foam and floral and craft foam components and elements are for illustration purposes only and are not to limit the scope of invention.
As is the case with all portions of this specification, the foregoing background information is to enable the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the public generally, and especially the scientist, engineers and practitioners in the art who are not familiar with patent or legal terms or phraseology, to determine quickly from a cursory inspection the nature and essence of the technical disclosure of the application. No portion of the background information is intended to restrict the scope of the invention which is measured by the claims, in any way. Yet, the background is intended to provide information to fully understand the claims with the broadest possible perspective.
Various problems occur when using conventional floral and craft foam cones to secure flowers in memorial vases. Memorial vases are the receptacles found near or in grave markers at cemeteries and memorial gardens used to contain flowers, either natural or artificial flowers. If the user does not know the memorial vase-opening dimension, the user will be required to guess the size of cone to purchase. If selected cone is too small for the memorial vase, the cone will not fit in the memorial vase properly resulting in several possible inappropriate scenarios: the floral arrangement will fall too deeply inside memorial vase, losing the desired arrangement appearance; the cone may lean to one side of memorial vase, causing the arrangement to be unbalanced; wind may cause the floral arrangement to spin around inside memorial vase; finally, the flower arrangement may be blown out of memorial vase by the prevailing winds. Flower arrangements blown out of memorial vases result in additional work for cemetery groundskeepers because they are responsible for picking up fallen flower arrangements. Groundskeepers must dispose of the arrangement because they cannot assume it belongs to any one particular memorial vase.
If the cone is too large for memorial vase, it may protrude out the top of the memorial vase, which is visibly unpleasant, or the cone will require cutting in order to fit inside memorial vase. It is common to insert artificial flowers in the floral and craft foam cone prior to visiting the cemetery. If the cone is too large, it is likely the outer edges or bottom stems of artificial flowers will need to be removed from the cone so the cone can be cut accordingly. Once the cone has been cut, the artificial flowers can be reinserted into the floral and craft foam cone.
Another problem when using floral and craft foam cones are that holes are created in the foam when flower stems are inserted into floral and craft foam cones. It is common for the user to repeatedly insert and remove stems and/or bushes to achieve the desired arrangement result. This procedure likely results in the enlargement of the original holes and/or additional new holes in the cone. Often stems are not inserted at a straight angle into the cone, which results in floral stems protruding out the sides or bottom of the cone. As a result, the stems must be removed and reinserted, leaving additional holes in the cone or making the original holes too large to adequately support artificial flowers. When stems are inserted through the sides and bottom of the cone, holes are left penetrating completely through the cone. When this occurs, tiny pieces of foam escape through the holes made in the cone causing foam pieces to fall on the users work surface. The cone may also be damaged in a manner that it could cause large chunks of cone to break off. Cleaning up this debris is a messy and time consuming process. When used in memorial vases, floral and craft foam cones have a short lifespan because harsh weather conditions and ultraviolet light cause the foam to disintegrate. Due to this disintegration, it is common after each use to dispose of the cones. Therefore, even when the proper size floral and craft foam cone is inserted into the memorial vase, its lifespan is limited. In sum, there are significant drawbacks in using polystyrene or other polymer foams to secure flowers in memorial vases.
The instant invention provides an economical method for displaying artificial flowers in memorial vases since it can be reused over and over again. The instant invention saves money because it eliminates the need to repurchase the invention each time a new arrangement is created. Travel expenses are reduced because unnecessary trips to the store to purchase new floral and craft foam will be eliminated. This not only saves the user money, but also their time. It is common to find new flower arrangements in memorial vases for the following occasions; Valentines Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday of deceased, and death anniversary of deceased. New floral and craft foam would need to be purchased for each of these ten occasions. This would either result in finding the space to store the additional floral and craft foam cones or wasting gasoline and time by making additional trips to the store to purchase the cones.
Another problem with using floral and craft foam is the lack of a method for securing balloons to memorial vases. Balloons are frequently added to flower arrangements in memorial vases to remember special occasions of the deceased such as birthdays. The user must use his/her imagination to find a way to securely hold helium balloons in the vase. Often the balloons are tied onto one of the artificial flower stems in the floral and craft foam. This provides unnecessary stress on the artificial flower stem and leads to potential loss of the flower and damage to the arrangement.
There is a need for a better solution for holding artificial flowers and helium balloons in memorial vases because:                Users are often confused as to what size floral and craft foam to purchase.        Cones that are purchased too small may result in loosing the desired artificial arrangement appearance, an unbalanced arrangement, the wind spinning the arrangement around inside memorial vase, and the arrangement may be wind blown out of the memorial vase.        Cones that are purchased that are too large may protrude out the top of memorial vase and the cone may require cutting.        Holes are created in the foam which results in unbalanced and unsecured floral arrangements after repeated use.        The removal and re-insertion of artificial flower stems result in further cone destruction.        Cleaning up foam debris is a messy and time-consuming process.        Harsh weather conditions cause foam disintegration.        Floral and craft foam cones are likely to be replaced for each new artificial flower arrangement.        There is a lack of a method for tying on helium balloons to floral and craft foam.        